The Gaming Den

I snagged Folklore on the PS3. I remember hearing about it when the system came out, and I have a softspot for the dark side of fae.

I like the introduction/Keats' prologue. I'm hoping it keeps the murder mystery thing going.

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I also got Poker Night 2 on the Xbox. I grew up around card games, I can happily talk and play poker at the same time, it gives a few bonuses for other games (Borderlands 2 and Team Fortress 2, mainly), and I had ten bucks left on the points card I got. What the hell, why not.

As far as video poker goes? It's pretty ballin'. Brock Samson, Claptrap, Ash from Army of Darkness, and Sam from the old Sam and Max games all have their own tells and betting styles and the table conversations are epic.

Oh, and GLaDOS is the dealer.

If you should, by chance, play the game, I have one big tip.

When Sam starts throwing big bets out, fold. He's got something good and he's not gonna back down.

People kept recommending that I try a Terraria mod called the Story of Red Cloud. Then I heard that Terraria was gonna get a new update, and I realized that it might break the mod.

It's been a pretty interesting experience. The mod tries to make Terraria play more like Dark Souls, with elaborate prebuilt dungeons where you can only dig or blast through limited stuff. And you lose all your crafting souls when you die, with only one chance to get them back.

The coolest dungeon so far is the one that's been hacked so you can reverse gravity for yourself at any time, but that could change when I get to the new bosses the game adds. My favorite set piece is the ridiculous tower you have to climb to get the Grappling Hook, where poisonous darts are shooting at you from dozens of different directions. It came after a tunnel where I was running from a lava flood, but the lava didn't move fast enough to be scary even with all the cobwebs and traps in the way.

I recently found an PSP. Picked up Half Minute Hero. Somehow they took an oldschool 40 hour plot-lite level grinding JRPG and condensed it down to 30 seconds of awesome and adicting gameplay.

I've been playing Game Dev Tycoon lately, and it's pretty damn fun. I've heard people complaining that it copies Game Dev Story pretty heavily, so I checked it out too, but I find that Tycoon really has a better interface, and would actually really like to see a mobile version of it.

I recently started FAR CRY 3: Blood Dragon. The dialogue and plot is as ridiculous as I'd hoped. They went a bit too far on their color scheme though.

Comparing the gameplay to Far Cry 2, because I haven't played Far Cry 3. It's got the same breadth of weapons for planning/rushing madly; the major advancements I've seen are the minigodzillas that try to kill everyone, making them into a really wacky tool, and an idea so absurd, so ridiculous, so unrealistic that I've never seen it used in a game before: hostage rescue missions where they shoot the hostage when they think they're under attack.

I've seen that.

Happened in LA Noire and Infamous.

I'm not a fan of Blood Dragon, but I love me some faux John Carpenter soundtracks so I can't hate it either.

So, my sister heard about an XBLA game called Fez.

Remember Super Paper Mario, where you could flip viewpoints?

Think a platformer centered around that. You can move the viewpoint as much as you want, 90 degrees at a time, to open up new facets and explore.

It's also a really cute game.

Edit: Also started Brutal Legend.

I am spontaneously getting an appreciation for the metal genre.

Gameplay could be better--in fact, it reminds me of Overlord--and I can't comment on the plot, but I like the aesthetics and the sense of humor it has for itself.

Picked up System Shock 2 on Steam.

Shit be HARD. It does not seem to be possible to back away while swinging wildly, so my only weapon being a wrench kind of, uh, sucks.

You're not really supposed to fight people in System Shock are you? Like, it's there as an option, but it's all much easier if you don't. It's not Gordon Freeman you're playing, not yet.

name_here wrote:Picked up System Shock 2 on Steam.

Shit be HARD. It does not seem to be possible to back away while swinging wildly, so my only weapon being a wrench kind of, uh, sucks.

If Bioshock taught me anything, it's that a well-maintained and pimped out wrench is the best way to fuck someone's day up. Besides, what if you shoot people and it turns out you wanted to use those bullets to shoot other people? The only answer is wrench. Unless you find something pointier, sharper, and posibly made out of lasers. That's cool too.

Yeah, I played the Wrenchmaster in Bioshock, too.

Just take everything that can buff the wrench, and stealth, and save the ammo for stuff you need...

name_here wrote:Picked up System Shock 2 on Steam.

Shit be HARD. It does not seem to be possible to back away while swinging wildly, so my only weapon being a wrench kind of, uh, sucks.

Against pipe hybrids, you can fence. They tend to get stuck in attack animations. They do have one fast, super hard, side strike that will occasionally catch you off guard, but they mostly attack with this stupid slow underhand that takes them about ten minutes to complete, during which time you can beat them to death.

Sound is really important in that game. You'll hear them coming miles away, and it's trivially easy to ambush stuff from behind. With a half decent strength and/or a strength implant, you'll beat half your enemies to death before they even turn around. The only things worth shooting initially are monkeys (if you can't ambush them), shotgun hybrids (if you can't close the gap very fast and are going to strafe in and out of cover to avoid counter attacks), turrets (preferably after you've turned the security off and bludgeoned them down to a sliver of health), and cameras (if you havn't turned the security off, or you have but you can't reach them).

One other thing I would say is actually use the strength implants and injections. System Shock 2 has a ton of those powerups, and you can fall into the retarded trap of dying all the time while having a dozen strength and speed hypos in your inventory because you're "saving them for when you need them". Once you get a couple of strength implants, you can pretty much have one installed 24/7, swapping them out when they die and recharging them all whenever you happen to pass a recharger; just remember to take them out if you want to sit and research or chill in a safe area or whatnot.

name_here wrote:Picked up System Shock 2 on Steam.

Shit be HARD. It does not seem to be possible to back away while swinging wildly, so my only weapon being a wrench kind of, uh, sucks.

The wrench is your best friend, because:

1)It doesn't need maintenance.

2)No ammunition.

3)It actually does good damage for the first third of the game.

4)IT DOESN'T FUCKING NEED MAINTENANCE.


As for bioshock, I only played the melee mofoe in 2, because of that tonic that makes plasmids really inexpensive, and the fact that the wrench dosn't cut it in survival difficulty.

I got Tales of Graces f on the PS3.

I finally had to look up what the f was for, and found out it'd been a Wii game. It shows in how the battle controls go.

I'm reserving judgment on the plot/characters, but the first act did end with a spectacularly hard bring-down-to-earth moment for the main character. Seriously, seriously hard.

So now I'm at the obligatory part of a JRPG plot where the hero gets a few kicks in the balls, and then starts pulling himself back together.

Side note: I find that it's generally a good idea to find some friends to play the Tales games with you. On top of the usual playing-jrpgs-with-friends benefits (streamlines lookups and planning, extra larfs), fights are a lot less aggravating when the casters aren't being morons.

Tales of Graces is oddly easy. I haven't yet lost a fight. The only thing that came close was the fight against the giant slime.

But you're right. That is one benefit for the tales games. If I had another PS3 controller, I'd be doing that. IT worked for a lot of Symphonia and Vesperia.

GOOD GOD A'MIGHTY, I JUST DID A BOSS BATTLE ON METAL GEAR RISING AND IT TOOK ME FIFTEEN DAMN MINUTES.

Damn, that shit was a pain in the ass.

Been playing the console version of Terraria for the last three days, I actually really like the interface they've made for it, and prefer using the controller to mouse and keyboard.

Here's hoping some someone makes a mod for the PC version that adds good controller support and a matching interface.

Was it that fucking piece of shit robot wolf?

John Magnum wrote:Was it that fucking piece of shit robot wolf?

No, it was Monsoon. The dude who splits apart to avoid being hit.

The wolf killed me a few times, but once I figured out how to dodge the chainsaw rapetail, I handled it. (Also, you 'lack brutality?' Come on, dude, you stuck a chainsaw tail into people!).

Monsoon, though, didn't kill me. It just took FOREVER.

Playing Sword of the Stars: The Pit right now. Sci-fi roguelike. Fucking awesome.

Do we talk about mobile games in this thread too?

Because this shit is hilarious, and addicting, to boot.

I got the Skyrim Legendary edition.

Just went to the temple where you learn about Dragonborn and shouts. On the way up, I encountered my first Sabre Cat, and lived.

I feel this bodes well.

Also:

Playing Nord, working a lot of magic and one-handed weapons, trying to smith better stuff as I got